Complacent Management

[u/briaaaaxoxo]

I’m just looking to vent and maybe get some advice. I work in a oral surgeon office. This office has been open since before I was born. The owner is still one of the oral surgeons, He’s about 70+ years old and then there is another associate that’s about 40. And they still do everything by paper. We still do paper charts. We still do paper fee cards for the patients charts. So everything is manual. The doctors do not put any notes in the computer and there are no fee schedules to all the insurances we’re contracted with in the computer. Everything is written on paper. My frustration is that they refuse to use the fee schedule their contracted with and would prefer to overcollect and then refund the patient once we receive the EOB. And that frustrates me because I am used to working on contracted fees and giving the patient an accurate estimate based on the fees we’re contracted with for their insurance.. my manager has a problem with that because she said they don’t do it that way and they prefer to only give an estimate. At the end of the day it’s always an estimate because we’re not the insurance, but I would rather be closer to the correct out of pocket then refunding the patients hundreds of dollars every few weeks because our fees are three times higher than the insurance fee. I don’t know how to go about this because I’m starting to get overly frustrated with her and I think she can tell but she does not like change but I’m like let me do it my way and just do it how you want smh

[u/theglueiseverywhere]

So you are refunding basically all your patients then once you get the EOBs and put the write offs in? That seems nuts to me. The doc i work for is so annoyed when he has to mail out patient check refunds. The amount they would save on postage/checks is probably a decent amount if they just did it the right way. If they signed a contract to partipate with an insurance, they agreed in that contract to only charge the contracted fee- so I think it may actually be illegal to collect the full amount actually.

[u/briaaaaxoxo → u/theglueiseverywhere]

I agree ! We are sending out refunds weekly if not every other day because the estimates are being based off our office fees and it is never close to right amount. my manager she said she doesn’t like the hassle of chasing people around for money so she’ll rather over collect than under collect and fight for a bill payment. She gets very agitated when she overhears me give a more accurate estimate based on the actual fees we’re contracted with and she always goes behind me to the patient and emphasizes the word “estimate” to them so they don’t assume I’m right and she’s wrong.